Rolling Stone (22 page)

But they weren't anywhere.

Jake, of course—the real pick-pocket type. It enraged him to think of Jake's hand in his pocket, slipping in, slipping out, palming the clip, getting away with the pistol, putting it back empty.… The anger burned itself out. No use being angry.

What did it mean?
That was the thing. It meant something—but what? Had Jake acted under orders, or was it a private flutter of his own? He could think of reasons why Maud Millicent should wish to have him disarmed. If he was to figure as the villain of the piece, the murderer of Francis Bird, of Louisa Spedding, and perhaps of Terry Clive, it would be just as well to make sure that he was not in a position to break out of the trap which had been so carefully set. He might give trouble. With a pistol and two clips of ammunition he might give a quite considerable amount of trouble.

On the other hand, Jake might have acted without orders. He might be up to some game of his own. Or he might be suspicious, and afraid of being taken at a disadvantage. Possession of the only firearm would naturally impart a comfortable sense of security. Peter would have liked to accept this theory, but the more he thought about it, the less he believed in it.

No, Jake was acting under orders, which meant that Spike Reilly was in for it. He looked back over the whole astonishing ten days, and saw quite plainly that Spike Reilly had been brought over from Brussels for this one purpose. He was the tool who had outlived his usefulness, the fool who had begun to ask for more, to brag, to hint at blackmail. He had become a liability, and Maud Millicent saw her way to converting him into an asset. The real Spike Reilly would probably have walked blindfold into her trap.

The question was what Peter Talbot, with his eyes open, was going to do about it.

CHAPTER XXXII

Maud Millicent came in the dark of the Thursday evening.

Louisa Spedding had been dead three days. Terry Clive had been missing three days. The papers clamoured. Scotland Yard hummed. Mr. Basil Ridgefield wore out its corridors with his pacings, and the patience of its officials with his continuous insistence that something should be done. The inevitable reply that the police were doing everything in their power pacified him not at all. He returned to his house to snatch a hasty meal, to ring up members of parliament, and to write indignant letters to the press. After which, refreshed in pertinacity, he once more returned to haunt police headquarters.

In those two or three days Fabian Roxley went haggard and yellow. He was punctual and efficient at his work, but he had the eyes of a man who has forgotten how to sleep, and who does not remember when he last tasted food. Garrett snapped and swore, kept his promise of secrecy, and told himself fifty times a day that he was a fool for doing so—and, quite possibly, an accessory to murder. For all he could see, Maud Millicent had scored again. Francis Bird was dead, Louisa Spedding was dead, and Terry Clive and Peter Talbot were off the map, and because he had promised Peter Talbot to hold his tongue he was holding it. When two more bodies were fished up out of the river he could tell himself how clever he had been. He had a more vicious snarl for himself than any which his subordinates had to endure. But one thing he promised himself—if Maud Millicent got away with this, she wouldn't get away for ever. He would get her, if it took him from here to Timbuctoo and from now to Doomsday.

The odd house-keeping in the basement went on. The Bruiser was there at night, Jake in the day, Peter Talbot all the time. The Bruiser slept by night, and for the most part Jake pretended to sleep by day. Sometimes he went out into the yard, but when he did this he left the back door open and took the key with him. Sometimes he would be away as much as ten minutes, throwing a lump of coal for Alf to fetch. Terry tried to make friends with him over Alf. She had never met anyone she couldn't make friends with before, but the expression in Jake's eyes stopped her dead—a knowing, leering glitter which made her feel rather sick. She failed with the Bruiser too. He was not so offensive as Jake. He had more the look of a sullen brute. He would come in, eat his supper without a word, and then fling himself down on the mattress in the corner.

These two rebuffs drove her closer to Peter. She came inevitably to regard him as an ally. He was on guard, but she began to think of him as on guard against Jake's insolence and the Bruiser's brutality. They had shown no more than a hint of these things, but she was aware of them, and aware that Peter stood between her and any more open manifestation.

Peter, for his part, was pulled in two directions. At their first meeting Terry had walked into his mind. She had stirred him to amusement. He had admired her courage, the way she looked, the way she spoke, the way she had told him off and made him give her back the pearls. Now she began to walk into his heart. He was with her all day. He saw that her courage never flagged, and that even in imprisonment she could set about making a home. He liked that, but there were a dozen quite irrational things which made him like her more—the way she laughed, the way she caught her lip between her teeth, the way she looked at him, the way she looked at Alf, the way she spoke, the way she walked, the way she beat up eggs in a china bowl. Peter, in fact, was falling in love, and falling rapidly. He spent hours of those three nights wondering whether to try and knock the Bruiser out and get Terry away. If he failed, if for instance the Bruiser were to knock him out, Terry would have no protection, and he would lose the chance of identifying Maud Millicent Simpson. If there had been any certainty of getting Terry away, or even a good chance, he must have taken it. But the risk was a horrible one. He decided to wait on the event.

Maud Millicent arrived in the deep dusk when one car looks like another and all the cats are grey. The man who had driven her came down the steps and rang the area bell. When the door opened he stood aside and she passed him and went in. Peter, in the kitchen with Terry, saw her standing on the threshold looking at them. He received an extraordinary shock. It was the Bruiser whom he had expected to see, but here in the doorway was Maud Millicent. It could be no one else. Maud Millicent in the guise of a young woman smartly dressed in black, the latest extravagant hat tilted to show the latest extravagant hair, so pale as to look primrose under the light. She was slimly belted under a square-shouldered black coat swinging open. There was a bunch of greenish orchids at the bosom of her black dress. There were pearl studs in her ears. Her lips were vivid with paint. But from the lips upwards there was something so horrid, so unnatural about her aspect, that Terry drew in her breath with a gasp and Peter had a moment of nausea. All the upper part of her face was covered by some kind of a mask shaped to the contours of nose, cheek and brow, and tinted as the face of a doll is tinted. The eyebrows were arched and painted in a flat, shallow brown, but where the eyes should have been the mask was cut away. The effect of the living eyes looking out of this coloured mask was horrible. They raked the kitchen at a glance, took in the tidy floor, the shining range, the young man and the girl at the table, the whole orderly, peaceful scene.

Peter pushed back his chair and got up, but Terry sat where she was. It was she who had been facing the door. She went on facing it now. She had one hand on the table. With an effort of will she kept it from closing. The other hand was in her lap. It clenched hard and drove the nails against the palm.

The eyes which looked through the eye-slits of that unnatural mask came coldly to rest upon her. Without turning her head Maud Millicent lifted her voice to say,

“You two men can stay where you are. I'll call if I want you.”

This lifted voice was hard and sweet. It was the voice which belonged to the mask. The sweetness was a metallic, mechanical sweetness. It had no human quality.

She came towards them, her hands in a small black muff. Peter wondered whether the little pistol was there too. She came to the corner of the table and looked for the first time directly at him.

“You seem to have carried out your instructions,” she said.

He said, “I've done my best.”

A faint mockery crept into the metallic voice.

“You've made her comfortable.”

“She has made us comfortable,” said Peter.

“Domesticated? That was more than you could have bargained for. Well, you won't have to play gaoler much longer. What about the bruise? It's had time to come out. Is she marked at all?”

Peter said, “I've no idea.”

Maud Millicent laughed.

“What wasted opportunities!” She turned to Terry Clive. “It was the left arm. Roll up your sleeve and let me have a look at it.”

Terry sat where she was, the one hand clenched in her lap and the nails driving home, the other lying open and steady on the table. She lifted her eyes to the eyeholes of the mask and said,

“Why?”

Maud Millicent did not move. She did not raise her voice. Something came from her—a terrifying sense of power. Terry had never felt anything like it before. It shook her. Maud Millicent said,

“Do you want me to call the men in to strip you? Do what you are told!”

Terry's hand went to her sleeve. She pushed it up a little way, and felt her fingers shake. That made her so angry that it did her good. Her blood ran hot. She stood up and held out her arm. The hand was brown to the wrist, but the arm milky white. Only three or four inches of mis whiteness showed, then the blue sleeve began.

“That is no good. Push it right up above the elbow!”

Terry shook her head.

“It won't go any farther.”

“Then take your dress off! I've got to see the arm. If you're modest”—the voice sneered—“Spike can look out of the window. Hurry up or I'll have Jake in to help you!”

Terry undid the buttons of her dress and pulled it over her head. She stood up in her short peach-coloured petticoat and held out her left arm. Maud Millicent drew an ungloved hand from her muff and took her lightly by the wrist. The arm was turned this way and that. The metallic voice said,

“There's no bruise. I couldn't have held her so hard after all. There's just the faintest mark where the hypodermic needle went in, but that's easy to fake.” She was talking about Terry, but she wasn't talking to her. She dropped the wrist she was holding, put her hand to the breast of her coat, and said, “Turn your arm. Come right under the light.” And then, before Terry knew what was going to happen, the muff was under her elbow and Maud Millicent's hand with a pin in it had traced a straggling scratch which crossed the mark of the hypodermic.

Between pain and surprise Terry cried out.

Peter turned round, to see the blood running down her arm. The eyes behind the mask met his with a glitter in them. The hand that had held the pin went back into the black muff.

He commanded himself. He wondered how much of his fury had shown in his face. Not much, he thought. Maud Millicent was certainly armed. If she shot him down, Terry was as good as dead. Jake and the driver were just on the other side of the open door.

Maud Millicent Simpson laughed.

Terry said, “How dare you?” And in the same breath, “It's nothing.” She put out her hand to Peter. “It's nothing really. But why did she do it? Is she mad?”

“What a comfortable thought!” said Maud Millicent. “Make the most of it. You're just about finished with, you know.”

“What will you take to let me go?” said Terry with stiff lips.

Maud Millicent laughed again.

“What do you think?”

Terry said, “I don't know.”

“Nor do I. And I haven't any more time to waste on you. Put on your dress! Spike, you'll come with me.”

She walked out of the door and down the passage to Terry's room. Peter followed her. If she shut the door, could he rush her, get the pistol, or stop her getting it? The temptation shook him. If he tried and failed—finish for Terry. But there was no safe way—no way which didn't hazard both their lives. He thought he would hear what she had to say.

She didn't close the door. She left it wide open and went over to the window on the far side of the room. Standing there, she could look right down the long passage to the area door where Jake and the driver waited. They were in sight, but not in hearing. The setting was perfect for an interview with a gang member whom you had ceased to trust, or perhaps had never trusted. He wondered whether she trusted anyone at all.

She stood with her back to the window and said low and hard,

“You've done very well. You seem to have made friends with her. Nothing could be better. The whole thing can be cleared up now. That little scratch on her arm is the sort of thing anyone might have—an unfastened brooch would account for it. The mark left by the hypodermic needle goes out. Terry Clive goes out too—” She paused, and added, “tonight.”

Peter said, “How?” He hoped his voice was quite ordinary.

She stood there with her hands in her muff, an elegant, ultra-smart young woman. The unshaded light in the ceiling dazzled on the pale hair, on the pearl in her ear, on the painted lips and the hard texture of the mask. She said,

“This is how.”

Peter moved a step and turned to shut the door. Her voice came at him like a pistol shot, just the one word,

“No!”

He made his face stupid and turned back again. She had him covered. The hand in the muff held a pistol—he was quite sure of that. He looked enquiry, and she said,

“Leave that door alone! Stand away from it! I want to keep my eye on the others. What are you afraid of? They can't hear us.”

Peter said, “Oh, no.”

He saw her smile. Would he recognize that smile? He wished he knew some way of recognizing her. Louisa Spedding had said, “No matter what she did or how she changed, I should always know her.” Why hadn't he made Louisa speak? He could have made her speak. If he got free of this place he might meet Maud Millicent in the street and never know her again. She could be any woman, play any part. He thought with contempt of his feeble efforts to identify her by snicking her dress in the taxi. The old woman's dress belonged to the old woman's part—she might never wear it again. Neither of the two women he had met was the real woman. Nobody knew what the real woman looked like.